Teachers’ Unions in Latin America Take Militant Tack

Teachers’ strikes throughout Latin America have left millions of
students out of school this year, and in some cases, even sparked
violent clashes between militant protesters and police forces.

The demands made by the teachers—better salaries, more
resources, a rejection of school privatization—in many ways
mirror the seminal issues raised by teachers’ unions in the
United States. But the aggressive, confrontational public acts embraced
by many labor organizations in Central and South America as a way to
sway government policies reveals a type of militancy rarely seen in
teachers’ unions in the States.

Some experts, in fact, believe that teachers in Latin America are
becoming more radical.

"Public-sector unions have become very militant," said Victoria
Murillo, an associate professor of political science and international
affairs at Columbia University. "There’s a lot of variation in
union organizing in Latin America, but by the 1990s, the public-sector
unions in most of these countries were characterized by militancy
because most of them really suffered a reduction in wages."

What’s more, said Ms. Murillo, who has written about
teachers’ unions in Argentina, "in both Peru and Honduras,
there’s a centralized teachers’ movement with a single
union representing all teachers, which makes them relatively strong
compared to other countries."

Looting and Burning

In Honduras, teachers shut down major highways and called for the
resignation of President Ricardo Maduro during a strike that began in
June, when about 60,000 teachers walked off the job, demanding better
pay and more government funding for education.

During one march to the national Congress in the capital of
Tegucigalpa, teachers carried wooden sticks and rocks as they joined
several thousand striking workers. Banks and other businesses shut down
during the march, and the military was called in to set up barricades.
About 2 million students missed classes during the 35-day strike that
ended in July, after the government agreed to wage concessions.

Peruvian teachers went on a nationwide strike for three weeks that
same month, calling on embattled President Alejandro Toledo to live up
to his campaign promise of raising teachers’ salaries and
improving education in a country where most teachers struggle on the
$200 they make a month.

Striking teachers were mobilized by Peru’s influential
teachers’ union, known in Spanish as the Sindicato Unico de
Trabajadores Educación del Peru, or SUTEP, which represents
about 145,000 teachers countrywide. A more radical faction of SUTEP
unionists was joined by other workers July 1 in the city of Ayacucho,
where more than 300 teachers occupied a municipal building, set fire to
a hotel belonging to the mayor, looted automatic teller machines, and
clashed with military forces and the police.

The strike ended in July after the government agreed to small wage
hikes.

Last year in Guatemala, about 60,000 public school teachers went on
strike for more than a month, calling for salary increases, as well as
more textbooks and repairs to crumbling school buildings. At the height
of the walkout, students, families, and indigenous groups joined
teachers in shutting down the main airport and border crossings for
several days.

The frequent teachers’ strikes and level of populist anger
against some governments in Latin America is being driven in part, some
observers say, by a broader convergence of social movements resisting
"neoliberal" economic policies.

Those policies are adopted by governments that follow the blueprints
of international lending institutions like the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund. Critics say the economic models encouraged
by those organizations favor the privatization of public services and
the paying down of a nation’s debt at the expense of funding for
social programs like education.

"Teachers do not have enough money to live on, and government
support for education is eroding," said Bob Arnove, an Indiana
University professor who specializes in comparative education and has
written about education in Latin America. "In the context of this
neoliberal agenda, education is being privatized and decentralized, and
teachers in many of these countries are some of the most unionized
professionals so they can speak out collectively against these economic
policies."

David Dorn, the director of international affairs for the American
Federation of Teachers, says the perspective of teachers’ unions
in South America are shaped by the legacy of politics and history in
the region. Although some unions have evolved to the point where they
can work pragmatically with governments, said Mr. Dorn, who has worked
with South American labor groups, many others still view any
relationships with their governments from a "class warfare"
perspective.

"While historical ties between teachers’ unions, political
parties, and leftist ideologies waned after the fall of Soviet
communism, many traditions and instincts linger on," he said.

Targets for Persecution

Unions in some Latin American countries have faced decades of
harassment for their political activity.

Teachers in Colombia, in particular, often have been targeted and
killed by paramilitary groups, as well as terrorists involved with drug
trafficking during the country’s 4-decades-old civil war.

Last year alone, 41 teachers were murdered in Colombia, many in
retaliation for their union activism, according to the
Federación Colombiana de Educadores, or FECODE, the
nation’s largest teachers’ union. Many of those killings go
unpunished.

"In Colombia, there is great intolerance of unions," said Max
Correa, a union leader for FECODE in Bogotá, during an interview
in Washington. "Our unions are immersed in this history of violence in
Colombia. Many of us have been threatened and have suffered physical
attacks. I have received death threats. The majority of union leaders
have been threatened. Because of this, the unions have been
debilitated. People are scared," he said.

Mr. Correa recently visited the United States, along with other
FECODE members, at the invitation of the AFT, the AFL-CIO, and the U.S.
Department of Labor.

The AFL-CIO runs a Washington-based Solidarity Center that helps
workers around the world build independent unions, and officials asked
the Colombians to meet with members of local and state unions in
several U.S. cities.

Laura Henao, the secretary of women and family affairs for FECODE,
said schools located in rural areas of Colombia are often in territory
where paramilitary groups and leftist guerrillas are fighting. "The
violence in Colombia has an enormous effect on the quality of
education, and on Colombian families and teachers," she said.

Links to Terrorism?

In some South American countries, such as Peru, government officials
have accused factions of teachers’ unions of having links with
terrorist groups bent on destabilizing or overthrowing the
government.

When a faction of striking Peruvian teachers joined other workers to
occupy a municipal building in Ayacucho this summer, Peru’s prime
minister, Carlos Ferrero Costa, claimed the union was influenced by a
Maoist-inspired terrorist group, Sendero Luminoso. The terrorist group,
which had its birth in Ayacucho, was infamous in Peru during the 1980s
and 1990s for brutal murders, torture, and kidnappings of government
officials.

But Mauricio Quiroz Torres, a Lima-based coordinator for SUTEP,
Peru’s main teachers’ union, calls that allegation a lie
perpetuated by the government to divert attention from the real issues:
declining teachers’ wages, diminishing levels of government
support for public education, and the increased contracting of
temporary teachers who can be fired without cause.

"The accusation is unfounded, a tale conceived of by the government
to discredit our national union, and to take away the support we have
from the people," Mr. Torres said in an e-mail interview. "Teachers
peacefully occupied various public localities. The national police of
Peru used unusual violence even though the teachers had already signed
agreements with the authorities to dialogue about the issues."

Coverage of cultural understanding and international issues in
education is supported in part by the Atlantic Philanthropies..

Learn more about the AFL-CIO's Solidarity Center, a Washington D.C. based "non-profit organization that assists workers around the world who are struggling to build democratic and independent trade unions." A description of the group's programs in the Americas, as well as relevant resources, has been posted.

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